Internet filter backflip is an opportunity lost

Deep inside the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s Sydney headquarters, behind frosted glass and a security door few staff can open, sit 10 people with the unenviable task of watching child abuse online.

When an Australian complains about online content they believe is illegal, this is likely the first port of call. ACMA churned through approximately 6000 complaints about online content last year alone.

But the communications regulator’s task was diminished when the government decided to push away from the mandatory internet filter it first proposed in 2007. No doubt one of the biggest banes of
Stephen Conroy
’s communications portfolio, the new version of the filter – which is still mandatory for internet users by the way – will instead use a blacklist of entire websites, rather than individual web pages, depicting the ‘worst of the worst’ in child abuse as determined by Interpol.

The newer filter, which has been trialled by the bigger ISPs for the past two years, is a more successful way of filtering out dodgy material, according to Senator Conroy.

But the question remains whether ACMA’s own blacklist isn’t more suited to tackling online child pornography at its heart; its creators and core audience.

The Interpol system is, by its own admission, a preventative measure largely inefficient at actually stemming paedophilia online. Those intent on creating and sharing that content will do so in ways not as easily controlled by police forces or even ISPs.

The Australian Federal Police, which distributes the blacklist locally, is yet to determine what kind of success the trial has been in Australia. Of those involved in the two-year trial, only Telstra provided statistics and those were difficult to evaluate.

Though ACMA’s blacklist was rightfully stigmatised for problems around scope creep and rather vague conditions on ‘refused classification’ material that went far beyond child pornography, it still has its uses.

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The blacklist is still maintained, a spokesman confirmed last week. It just won’t be implemented by ISPs.

Instead, ACMA staff will continue to pass any child abuse material to an international non-profit organisation, INHOPE, which then works with the ACMA’s foreign equivalents and police forces to taken down the sites, often in a matter of hours or days.

The operation was behind the arrest of a 47-year-old man from Queensland’s Gold Coast by the state police’s Taskforce Argos earlier this year. Unlike those who accidentally stumble across one of the sites banned by Interpol – and it will happen, the police organisation says – INHOPE actually took down a man allegedly creating and distributing child exploitation material. INHOPE says it dealt with nearly 30,000 individual complaints covering around 27,000 unique web pages across the past financial year; which seems a lot more comprehensive than the 1400 websites Interpol has on its list.

The Interpol system, by contrast, is a one-size-fits-all approach attempting to remediate the vast differences between each member country’s online regulation. For instance, the list only includes those sites depicting children under the age of 13, rather than 18, as is illegal in Australia. INHOPE’s efforts, and by extension those of ACMA, are tailored and arguably more efficient.

One can’t blame Senator Conroy for claiming success in a trial he didn’t come up with, while ditching a policy he did. It certainly goes to demonstrate his political acumen in the lead-up to a federal election. But for all the criticism organisations have given him for the original filter idea in 2007, perhaps he was on the right track after all.